“When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.” Jonah 2:7
If ever there was someone in a dire circumstance, with almost no hope to be delivered from it, it was Jonah. A captive in the belly of a fish, he was a prisoner in utter darkness, deprived of fresh air and sunshine, with weeds wrapped around his head, in total solitude. He was in essence “lost,” for his only point of reference was the walls of the belly of the fish, not having any idea where he was, except that the “floods” surrounded him, and the billows, or waves, relentlessly passed over him. He was a man who had come to the conclusion that God had cast him into the deep, and that now he had been cast out of His sight. He was persuaded for a time that he was alone, “without God,” lost, with strength and resolve failing, with only one place perhaps to look…upward. Jonah, at the end of three days would “…look again toward Your holy temple.” (2:4) There was but one hope left for Jonah, and that hope depended upon the saving mercy and grace of God. But first, there had to be a change of heart in Jonah, for Jonah had become an idolater without realizing it. We know this by what he wrote in his book: “Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy.” (2:8) Jonah became an idolater when he adopted a wrong idea of God, for this is how idolatry begins. Because of Jonah’s resentment towards the Ninevites, his hatred for them to the point of wanting them killed, he came to believe that God would let him go his own way, defying his calling and gifts. He also came to believe that he could escape the “presence of the Lord,” that somewhere, in this case by the sea, he could flee from God, without Him knowing, and without consequences. The very means by which he sought to escape became the very thing that would imprison him, the sea with a very large fish. However, God is bigger than Jonah, and all that he could erroneously think of Him. In His sovereignty He would prepare a fish, just the right size, at the right time, to save Jonah from drowning, eventually to save him from himself. The false ideas that Jonah had come to embrace and believe, would need to be shattered, for in reality, there was no place where he could escape to, no place or time where he could hide his defiance of God, the God who was seeking to save a multitude of people. So, how did God bring Jonah to a change of heart, so that He could save him?
God would first of all stop Jonah in his flight, thwarting his plans of escape. He shut them down, not giving Jonah the right to terminate his life, but to be in a position where God would use three days to bring Jonah to realize that nothing was by accident, and that God was seeking him, determined to restore him. The mission of Jonah never changed. It was the same before he came to reside in the belly of the fish, as it would be afterwards. There were only two things that kept him from God delivering him, the first being, his sin against God. That sin of rebellion, and disobedience had to be dealt with. It would take three days, but finally Jonah would come back to God, thinking rightly of Him.
The second thing that kept him from deliverance was the failure to remember, to remember the One who had called him, loved him, and equipped him to do His bidding, specifically in the proclamation of His life-giving words. It would be, when Jonah remembered that the Lord was gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, who relents from doing harm,” (4:2), that his prayer would rise up to God. God would restore his servant to the embracing again of his calling.
Dear Father, Help us to remember. In Jesus’ name, Amen.